Why Librarianship Is a Dream Job
(Did I really hear laughter out there?) Some people at the blog group asked me why librarianship is a dream job. I’m pondering it now and will have more of an answer later.
1) Flexibility
2) Knowledge
3) Playing with Information
4) In a knowledge economy, the people who have the information have power. (One day the world will act like this is true. I’m sure of it.)
5) I like learning and, in my job, I’m always learning.
6) I like so many subject areas I couldn’t pick just one. My job allows me to be a generalist.
7) I like connecting people to information.
I believe in access to information.
9) I like playing with technology. Combining information and technology is really exciting.
10) It’s really fun.
11) It’s one of the career fields with highly satisfied people working in it.
12) It’s a very safe field.
13) Brain power
14) It allows for creativity
15) It almost never seems like it’s the same thing every day.
16) There are a lot of really cool librarians
17) The field is going through some exciting changes
18) We have our own action figure (how could I forgot that?)
To be fair in my reporting, here are some drawbacks:
1) When people find out what I do for a living, they often make a generic comment (like “Oh. That’s nice.”) and walk quickly away to talk to someone else.
2) I got a lot of flack from some people for deciding to become a librarian. (My college science professor called my choice a waste of brain power, for example. A key relative didn’t get excited about it until I showed him all the ways my job involves computers.)
3) The salaries for many different kinds of librarians suck.
4) Many people don’t respect librarians.
5) When it’s time for budget cuts, librarians and libraries are often some of the people and costs cut first, so
6) when the economy is rough, like now, there aren’t that many jobs for librarians.
7) It’s an undervalued profession. In many environments, people do not realize all the benefits and cost-savings librarians and information professionals add.
Some people think librarianship is all about the Dewey Decimal Classification system.
9) The male and female stereotypes for librarians irk many information professionals.
10) Some people are convinced that librarians are always, 100% perfectly organized, clean, neat, and tidy and anal about that stuff and get really upset when they learn that it’s just not true.
11) Some people tease young librarians about their age ’cause our professional colleagues are getting older and there isn’t a substantial influx of young professionals.
12) The comment “Librarians need a master’s degree? Are you serious? Anyone can do this job. What do you need training for?”
Addendum 1/12/04: Someone shared this link to the facetious “Top Ten Reasons to Become a Librarian” T-shirt on a discussion list for solo librarians. Someone needs to come up with a version of this shirt for those of us not in traditional libraries.
